


After Impact

by Hecate



Category: Friday the 13th Series (Movies)
Genre: Codependency, F/M, Incest, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sibling Incest, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 14:00:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22974637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: When he's away from her, reality becomes transparent and untrustworthy. (Set post-movie)
Relationships: Clay Miller/Whitney Miller
Kudos: 5





	After Impact

For seconds, he has lost her again.

***

Later, he won't remember the last fight against Jason, the push and pull of heavy limbs and wet clothes, the pressure of water all around him. He will only remember the way air filled his lungs after, his sister's bloody hands pulling him into the woods again, running through trees and on a dirt road. Flashes of their survival, Whitney's breathing, her hand in his.

Later, he will remember the car, the scared tourists. He will remember how Whitney couldn't stop shaking in the backseat, how he looked at her and knew that his sister would never be okay again.

***

He never met Mike. Clay had already left his family before Whitney and Mike got together, and now Mike is dead. The police got what was left of his body out of Jason's hell hole; Whitney got a picture of him out of her old place. It stands on the bedside table now, Mike's smile on it lasting forever, and Clay knows it's the first thing Whitney looks at every morning.

Clay thinks he wouldn't have liked Mike but he never admits that to Whitney, just smiles when she tells him stories about her boyfriend, holds her hand when she realizes all over again that the past tense rules all those stories now.

7 weeks after Whitney moved in with him, he takes away Mike's picture. Whitney never asks about it.

***

It's one morning of many, Whitney pale against the yellow kitchen walls, a hand wrapped around her coffee cup. She isn't looking at him.

He's always looking at her these days.

"The dreams won't stop," she says into the silence, her eyes suddenly on him, and it hurts to see her like this.

Whitney is shaking again, her body fragile like a leaf, and he reaches out and pulls her in. Holds her hard enough to hurt her, her pained whimper wet against his chest. But she stops shaking, becomes solid against him. He doesn't let her go.

He won't make the same mistake twice.

***

Sometimes, he dreams of his sister lost with Jason forever, years passing her by in that hole, Jason the only one she ever sees. He dreams of Jason touching her.

He wakes up screaming.

Clay stumbles through the dark then, finds Whitney's room and watches her for the rest of the night.

His sister cries in her sleep.

***

Whitney hates the dark now and she hates to be alone.

***

He finds a new job and despises it.

He never tells Whitney that he loved the job he quit to search for her, never tells her that he used to have more friends. They gave up on him because he didn't give up on her, looked for her despite all the doubts surrounding him.

"She ran away," they used to tell him, and he still hates them for these words. Whitney would never run away.

He had been the one who had left her behind.

***

He can't stand not knowing where she is, needs to see her to make sure that it's real. He saved her. She saved him.

They're alive.

When he's away from her, reality becomes transparent and untrustworthy. She is still gone then, and there are no traces to follow, no monster to slay.

He's alone, he's dead.

He calls her on the phone, ignores the glares of his co-workers and takes in her voice, listens to his lifeline. He tells her he loves her.

"I know," she says, and he wants to be with her. "I love you, too."

***

The first time they go out together, Whitney drinks Jason's memory into oblivion. Clay holds her while she pukes hours later, carries her to his bed to sleep.

He sits on the floor, his back against the wall, and he watches her breathe. 

When she wakes, she tries to smile. 

She fails. 

He holds her hand.

***

10 weeks after hell, he climbs into her bed at night and swallows her sobs with his mouth.

***

Whitney is dancing, her eyes closed, her body pressed to a stranger, and Clay can't look away.

She's not beautiful, not anymore. She's too thin, too pale, too broken. But she moves like she wants everything, and the men in the club swarm around her, reaching and touching. She lets them lead her to the dance floor. 

It's the only time she smiles at them.

There's hunger in the sway of her hips, desire in her hands, and Clay drinks bitter beer and watches. When she leaves with the stranger, he follows, finds them in an alley. Listens to them in the dark, the rustle of clothes, Whitney's moans, a curse falling from the man's lips.

Clay is hard within seconds, shoves a hand into his jeans and jerks off to the sounds his sister makes. Comes because she's there and alive, comes when she does. 

Whitney screams his name.

She stays in the alley after the man leaves, and it's just them again. Her eyes meet his when he crosses the distance between them, and she looks so very tired.

"Knew you would come," she says and he pulls her with him.

***

Clay dreams of his mother and his failure, he dreams of Jason and blood. She is always dying and Jason is forever coming back to life. Clay wakes up shaking, hands balled to fists, the darkness of the room suffocating him like the dark soil of the cave he escaped months ago.

He dreams of Whitney, running ahead of him, trees around them. She's fast, too fast, a light flickering in and out, and then there are only the woods, and he's alone. When he falls into awareness, he wishes he would have dreamed of Jason instead.

He dreams of Whitney, naked and his. She's perfect under his hands, her body moving with his, her eyes on him. He wakes wet and warm, and he turns to touch the wall that separates their rooms.

He thinks his sister knows.

***

She speaks of her friends and the way they died one time and then never again.

***

Clay still has some of the 'Missing' posters he made, Whitney's face and his own desperation, and he knows he should throw them away, knows that holding on to them is wrong.

He keeps one of them under his pillow, pulls it out at night. Traces the black lines of his sister's picture, wraps a hand around his cock and brings himself off, pressing a hand against his mouth to keep in her name.

She finds the picture in his bed 15 weeks in, frowns and looks at him. Clay only shrugs and doesn't meet her eyes, stares at the floor when she steps closer, the poster still in her hand.

"Why?" She whispers and he shrugs again, wraps fingers around her empty hand. "Why?"

"I didn't find you fast enough."

She doesn't answer, just stands still, and he can't stand the inches between them, can't stand that all he can feel of her is the skin beneath his palm. He moves, crosses the distance, and she's so very warm against his body.

"I'm so sorry," he says against her lips.

When Whitney kisses him, she draws blood.

***

After the first time, she shudders and falls away, curls together and keeps on saying his name. It's a prayer, he realizes, the only one she had left when Jason had her, the one that remained unanswered for six weeks.

He doesn't dare to touch her until the sun rises.

***

"She's your sister," he tells the Clay in the mirror.

"Your sister," he repeats. Thinks of the way she arched into him, her mouth crashing against his, her skin turning red under his teeth.

Remembers how he found her, that sobbing mess under the earth, the fighter in the rain, the survivor. 

Smiles.

"Yeah, she is."

***

Whitney tastes of salt and memories, rain and blood. She tastes like survival. When he kisses her, he's alive; when he fucks her, the world falls away and they're all that is left.

They're bare and wide open, limbs pulling each other closer, cries swallowed by hungry lips and bodies, and he wants it to last forever. It never does but she's still with him after, her body so tiny at his side, so utterly breakable, and it scares him. 

"I found you," he says and curls around her, his body a wall to protect her. She presses back against him, her back against his chest, his arm around her. He can feel her breathe, he can feel her heart beat against his skin. "I found you."

Her fingers lock with his. 

"You did," she says.


End file.
